Mutant Data Orchestra

Description of the "Mutant Data Orchestra," published in "The Art of the Accident," 1998

The Mutant Data Orchestra rewires the products of our digital society to expose the hidden agents within. Through live circuit modification of digital answering machines, cheap digital toys and sound instruments the performers manipulate the data pathways and exert influence on their sound production without the use of a conventional software interface.

This inherent coupling of the performers to the internal chance agents produced by the rewired circuitry provides a real time balance, where the machine surprises the performer and the performer surprises the machine. The result is an improvisation based on a series of accidents directed towards a compositional whole.

Within these electronic machines, modifications are rationalized in relation to their aural results. Each device has a data output so that they can infect each other and influence their respective sound making capabilities. These sonic generators produce shards of noise with auto-improvised stabs of high pitched bell and cello tones. At times one can hear the intermeshing of data as a liquid waterfall of sonic information. The goal is to perceive data as living flowing entity where sound is used as the trace of exposure.

Collection of essays stating that the concept of “accident” contains not just the idea that each machine carries its particular form of disaster but also the suggestion that the old distinction between timeless form and time-dependent processes ...